


First Missions and Mistakes

by AndInThoseMoments



Series: Trust and Teamwork [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assets & Handlers, Gen, Mission Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 08:49:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndInThoseMoments/pseuds/AndInThoseMoments
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha and Clint are assigned their first mission together, but it doesn't go quite to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Missions and Mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to ShadowHaloedAngel for proofreading this.  
> Prompt: Songfic - for Dashboard Confessional's "Thick as Thieves"

It took another week for Natasha to get through every test that SHIELD could throw at her, and that was with her working harder than most other agents ever had. It was a week longer than she wanted to wait, but Clint made sure to regularly go to the range with her, and Coulson met with her regularly to explain how things worked in SHIELD. 

She accepted his help, and she was a quick learner. After only a couple of days he was looking forwards to their chats over coffee, and eventually she turned up with her own coffee as well. After their first meeting, where Coulson had made it clear that she owed him nothing outside of a professional capacity, she never hinted at anything more. She was happy to work with him, and Coulson was sure that in another couple of years she would be one of the best agents that SHIELD had ever known.

Coulson had ensured that she stayed rostered to him, which was simple enough. No one else seemed to want her. He was eager to get her out into the field with Clint as backup, and after a month of captivity and then support, she was finally considered an official agent of SHIELD.

She had eaten dinner with the two of them the night she was accepted as a real agent, looking at them with a knowing smile on her face.  
"You're good with him." She told Coulson, gazing at him with a gentle expression. "Which is good. Because if I didn't think you were going to take good care of my golub, I would hurt you."

Coulson wondered what it said about their relationship that after only a month he was willing to accept that death threats from Agent Romanoff came close to a compliment.  
"" Coulson answered, and she just raised an eyebrow at the fact he was fluent in Russian.

"Don't you fucking start..." Clint muttered, looking up at Coulson and glaring softly. He didn't mind being called 'pigeon' by Natasha, but he hoped it wouldn't spread.  
"Sorry Clint." Coulson answered, with a smirk that implied he wasn't sorry in the least. 

Clint shrugged, turning his attention to the scrap of chocolate cake left on Coulson's plate.  
"You going to eat that?"  
Coulson shook his head, pushing the plate over to him. Clint just smirked and fell on the food. Natasha's lips twisted a little, and for the first time, Coulson thought that the little smile on her face wasn't being faked to try and persuade him to do what she wanted. That smile was real.

"I want to see both of you first thing tomorrow at 0900 hours."  
"Alright sir." Natasha replied, while Clint groaned a little.  
"It's not all bad Clint. I've got a mission for you. Both of you."

Natasha smiled then.  
"Thank you sir. That's..." She hesitated, glancing over at Clint. "For the two of us together?"  
"Wouldn't dream of splitting you up."  
If the expression on Natasha’s face wasn’t relief, it was very close to it.

They reached the site of the mission, a large warehouse being used by a gang to smuggle tech about three decades ahead of anything that the world had access to - outside of Tony Stark's mansion or an alien civilisation that was. SHIELD’s job was to discover which of the two available options it was.

Natasha was to slip inside and gather the information, whilst Clint provided backup from the rafters. He'd shoot anyone who presented a threat and make sure that nothing went wrong - It wasn't that Natasha wasn't trusted, but for her first few missions reports would need to be kept carefully to prove that she could do what she needed to be able to. Coulson would be on comms to both of them the whole time.

He watched them heading out with a sense of nervousness that he didn't normally have. He knew what Clint could do, but in a way Natasha was untested. She was used to working alone, and he didn't know how well she'd cope with backup.  
"Keep in contact on comms, but Clint, don't chatter. Or sing. Just let Romanoff do what she's best at." He instructed into the device in his ear. 

"Yes sir." Natasha replied, while Clint blew a raspberry into the device, climbing up into the rafters of the warehouse.  
"In position." He echoed a moment later, having got himself comfortable on one of the beams. "Three guards by the entrance."

Natasha walked inside, incapacitating the guards in a heartbeat, keeping in mind Coulson's instruction of using only non-lethal force. Then she went to work on the lock that was designed to keep people away from the information housed within. It posed her no real challenge, and the door creaked open to reveal a room full of files.  
"There's a lot of papers here sir. What do I get?"  
"Grab the hard drives from the computers, any memory disks or USB drives you can see. Then any files in the top drawer of the desk, and anything else that looks interesting."  
"Yes sir." Natasha followed his instructions, grabbing what she had been told to and stuffing the rucksack she had been carrying with information. Once that was done, she slipped back out of the room, dodging the guards and heading towards the entrance.

She was nearly there when a loud thud sounded behind her.  
"Romanoff?" Coulson asked, seeking information about what was happening. She spun around and hissed, breathing out a curse in Russian.  
"Agent down." She stood frozen in the hall, feeling the weight of the bag on her shoulders, and seeing Clint lying on the floor before her, a tranq dart visible in his neck. The comm had fallen from his ear and lay on the ground beside him.  
"Get yourself out of danger Romanoff." Coulson demanded.

His voice shook a little as he ordered the one person who could help Clint away from him. Natasha deserved that, the chance to be shown that she was valuable. There were a large number of men on the site – even with the three she’d already taken out gone, there were seventeen left. That was too much to ask any agent to handle on her own.  
"Sir?"  
"You heard me."

Natasha fell silent, and from his vantage point, Coulson saw her running from the building. She raced to a nearby tree, pulling herself up onto the lower branches and scrambling up higher, ignoring the shouts of the men on the ground who were looking for her.  
"What are you doing Romanoff?"  
"Completing my mission sir." She informed him, climbing up as high as she could, until the branches would no longer be willing to support her weight. Then she took her rucksack off, and Coulson watched as she slipped it over a branch.  
"You see that sir?"  
"Romanoff..." He swallowed. "Don't put yourself in danger."  
"Yes sir." Natasha answered. "Information safely retrieved." Her hand darted to her ear, and Coulson almost flinched as her comm faded into static.

This wasn't what was meant to happen. He had expected this to be something simple, an easy starter mission for the two of them. Clint was down, injured or worse, and Natasha had just decided to stop listening to him. She wasn't ready to be out in the field. He'd made a mistake, and now both of his agents might be about to die for it.

He watched as she dropped down onto the ground and slipped away into the building. He was left to wait in silence, until a new voice came over Clint's comm.  
"We've got your man. And he will talk." 

The comms fell truly silent then, as the device was crunched beneath a man's heel. Coulson waited alone, fretting but giving them time. He considered calling for backup, but decided that it would be better to give Natasha a few minutes. No one else could get here quickly, and he wanted to show he trusted her even if she didn't seem to trust him. He felt almost frozen, a cold ball of dread settled in his gut.

Natasha made her way back inside the warehouse, careful to avoid the four men who were still searching for her. Those who remained inside had focused their attention on Clint, who they had bound to a chair. He was awake now, blood spilling out between his lips as punches hit his chest, leaving him gasping.  
"Who sent you?" The man who was landing the punches shouted, staring down at him. Clint spat blood in the man's face, glaring at him, and received another thump for his trouble.

"Who sent you?" He demanded, and Clint's eyes for a moment saw Natasha, before they slipped away. She moved around the group, picking off those at the back, her presence unnoticed as she thinned the group from thirteen to five.

The lead man was still shouting at Clint, screaming the same furious question time and time again.  
"I did." Natasha answered. The remaining men spun towards her, launching themselves at her, and she jumped, kicking the first in the face before twisting out of the way of the second, tripping him over the body of his comrade. She spun, slamming her elbow into the face of a third before knocking a fourth to the floor and slamming her foot down on his chest.

She looked back at the man who had been leading the interrogation against Clint before launching herself onto him, knocking him back to the ground and slamming his head hard into the concrete. She gripped his hair, pulling his head up from the ground and slamming it back again and again, until blood pooled behind his skull.  
"Stop..." Clint groaned, and reluctantly she did so, getting to her feet and delivering one final disgusted kick to the man on the ground, before crouching by Clint and untying him.

Her arms wrapped around his waist, and she guided him from the building.

Coulson's eyes widened as he saw the two figures leaving, the smaller supporting the larger. He radioed for an evacuation, seeing that Clint was injured, and then Natasha's comm crackled back into life.  
"Sorry about that sir. Parameters of the mission changed."  
"Don't ever turn your comm off on me like that again Romanoff." Coulson murmured, relieved to see them both in one piece. "Is Agent Barton alright?"  
"He has some injuries, but nothing serious. He’s a bit groggy but breathing."  
"Well done. Both of you." 

When Coulson met them, he was calm. He was sure he'd made the right call when he'd picked the team, and seeing Clint's bruised face split into a smile simply confirmed it.  
“Let’s get you home, and fed.” He muttered, taking Clint’s weight from Natasha, then paused. “After you retrieve that bag.”


End file.
